S.M.A.R.T
For consumers using a PC, one of the most important things is the confidence in HDD since the users store most of their substantial data in HDD. In other words, HDD is a final method to preserve data for consumers. For this reason, users have commonly seen or experienced many damages of intellectual property caused by the faults of the drive. To protect this problem, a few companies such as Ontrack in the U.S. and Myung Information System in Korea provide a data restoration service; the restorable data is limited and even if it is restored, the cost is much more than the price of HDD.
SAMSUNG is aware of the importance of data preservation in HDD and tries to improve the confidence in products in many ways. SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a product which warns users of the product's defects and informs the users to transfer data to other places. Therefore, this product results in improving the confidence in data preservation and the product itself.
How can a product that alerts you to the defects of HDD prevent data loss before your HDD crashes This product will provide epoch-making and safe PC configuration and prevent the tremendous damages caused by data loss.
This is how SAMSUNG SMART's performs and processes the problem. SAMSUNG SMART will allow the consumers to detect SAMSUNG HDD's defects in advance.
PC users and manufacturing companies at first need to understand the patterns of HDD's defects to know the SMART's performance and prevent the defects. There are predictable and unpredictable faults in defects of a HDD.
First, the predictable faults that predict the time of faults due to steady deterioration of a head, a servo, and a motor or something else. This product can predict the defects and give a user a warning to restore data in advance if error rate is higher than its standard set in advance or read/write time lingers. They generally include defects caused by mechanical abrasion or transformation, which are expected to form more than half of all the defects.
Second, there are unpredictable faults that cannot be found before chipset or circuits are examined through a microscope chipset. These unpredictable faults can lead to an instant malfunction in time. It is impossible to forewarn these defects, which can be ameliorated by stable manufacturing process, design and strict quality control.
With today's advanced technology, therefore, no company can predict 100 percent the defects of HDD itself and its excessive warning can produce ill effects
Until now PCs themselves have retained software such as ScanDisk or CHKDSK for self-monitoring analysis of HDD. SMART designed to fit the characteristics of peculiar pertinent drive, however, has better functions than its predecessors because it checks each internal component of HDD. The SMART program warns the users about the defects of HDD as shown below:
First, Host PC gives a command to take the confidence in a drive, and the drive continues to check the internal efficiency of major components such as a head, media, and motors. If the efficiency exceeds the previously set standard, it delivers a warning to Host. If SAMSUNG HDD, for example, has more than 50 errors in 10 billion data during the data-reading process, the program sends a warning signal of defaults to Host PC. Then, when a user turns on the computer, the program interrupts booting with a message or with a Norton SMART Doctor program in the Windows and warns the user of the danger and recommends backup of any important data.
SAMSUNG HDD's internal figures, the standard of feasible defaults by each component, use SAMSUNG SMART Revision 2B, the SAMSUNG standard. SAMSUNG sets up SAMSUNG SMART Revision 2B (SAMSUNG's own SMART standard) based on SSF-8035 which Compaq Computer and other major companies had set in the time they first presented SMART. SAMSUNG SMART Revision 2B includes major factors affecting HDD's defaults (Head Flying Height, Drive Run Time, Seek Error Rate, Random Seek
Time, etc.), and after setting the threshold against each factor, it sends a warning signal to Host PC when the measured figure of HDD exceeds the standard. A low figure threshold can lead to frequent warning signal which in turn can make the warning signal ineffective; a high figure can lead to defaults before a warning signal. SAMSUNG, after careful analysis on returned products and before sales to optimize the threshold for convenience of users, updates databases of all components within the extent to sufficient reflex of the industry's demand. SAMSUNG continuously tries to improve the SMART functions by periodically readjusting a realistic thresh old. SAMSUNG has been continually involved in research and development of confidence to improve satisfaction of our products, to minimize returned products, and ultimately to reduce the inconvenience and damages to the consumers. As a result, product return rate has sharply declined since 1998 and the introduction of SMART has improved the users confidence in data storage. Nevertheless, as a precaution to consumer data loss, SAMSUNG affords convenience to users in cooperation with Myung Information System. SAMSUNG will offer users to use our HDD as safe storage space for data with all these efforts
